Friday afternoon was memorable.
We had two waves of storms come through, both had hail but not too bad, pea sized. However, someone pulled to plug on the bathtub. The rain was torrential and the lightning spectacular. I don't know how much we got as both rain gauges were full at 7". Tornados were all around us. The little town of Lindale, 10 miles to the south got hit bad. Several building were destroyed and many, many homes were damaged by flying debris. The tornado hit a mini strip mall. The Dollar General was totally destroyed. The Family Fitness Center next to it was destroyed. Both were gone down to the concrete pad. Nothing left. Strangely, the Family Dollar store next to them was completely untouched. So there is a whole bunch of cheap shit scattered all over East Texas. That one passed to our East. There were others to our west and to our north.
We lost power about 5 o'clock in the afternoon. No big deal as we are prepared for such things ... kinda. That's when life started conspiring against me. No power, no TV, no internet, no weather updates, not a problem. I dig out the weather radio and am listening to the warnings being issued. It dies. Nothing. I reprogram it and it keeps telling me "No Channels Available". Still not a problem. I get the old boom box out and am listening to the local radio channel issue weather information when there is one horrendous clap of thunder and the station goes off the air. They took a direct hit. So now, in our highly technological age, I have nothing left that works except my cell phone. Luckily, I can still get a signal and know roughly what is going on.
When the power went out and while it was still light, I dug out the generators and lights and got them lined up. No need to get the generators fired up. It might only be a short outage. We ate a nice supper and waited. After about 6 hours, about 11 o'clock at night, it was obvious that the power wasn't coming back on anytime soon. Time to spring in to action. SOB. One generator wouldn't start. The other one started and run like a top so I could keep the 3 freezers and 3 fridges operating but it was a chore with only a 3 kW generator.
My wife announces that since she can't help, she's going to bed, see ya in the morning.
I'm outside about 3 o'clock in the morning, the rain has pretty much stopped and I'm getting ready to swap one set of fridge/ freezers to another set when I walk past the "dead" generator. I reach down and grab the pull start, yank it and the puppy fires right up. Now we're cooking. I've got all 6 fridges and freezers working at once. Let them run for a couple of hours and we're good for about an 8 hour sleep. It finally all came together.
Got up in the morning, a beautiful day, had my coffee and went outside to refuel the generators and start the routine all over again when BING, the power came back on. We were without power for about 20 hours. That's the worst outage we've had in well over 5, maybe 10, years but it got me to thinking about that back-up generator that I've been talking about and putting off for years.
Life is good ... if it don't kill ya!!!!
We had two waves of storms come through, both had hail but not too bad, pea sized. However, someone pulled to plug on the bathtub. The rain was torrential and the lightning spectacular. I don't know how much we got as both rain gauges were full at 7". Tornados were all around us. The little town of Lindale, 10 miles to the south got hit bad. Several building were destroyed and many, many homes were damaged by flying debris. The tornado hit a mini strip mall. The Dollar General was totally destroyed. The Family Fitness Center next to it was destroyed. Both were gone down to the concrete pad. Nothing left. Strangely, the Family Dollar store next to them was completely untouched. So there is a whole bunch of cheap shit scattered all over East Texas. That one passed to our East. There were others to our west and to our north.
We lost power about 5 o'clock in the afternoon. No big deal as we are prepared for such things ... kinda. That's when life started conspiring against me. No power, no TV, no internet, no weather updates, not a problem. I dig out the weather radio and am listening to the warnings being issued. It dies. Nothing. I reprogram it and it keeps telling me "No Channels Available". Still not a problem. I get the old boom box out and am listening to the local radio channel issue weather information when there is one horrendous clap of thunder and the station goes off the air. They took a direct hit. So now, in our highly technological age, I have nothing left that works except my cell phone. Luckily, I can still get a signal and know roughly what is going on.
When the power went out and while it was still light, I dug out the generators and lights and got them lined up. No need to get the generators fired up. It might only be a short outage. We ate a nice supper and waited. After about 6 hours, about 11 o'clock at night, it was obvious that the power wasn't coming back on anytime soon. Time to spring in to action. SOB. One generator wouldn't start. The other one started and run like a top so I could keep the 3 freezers and 3 fridges operating but it was a chore with only a 3 kW generator.
My wife announces that since she can't help, she's going to bed, see ya in the morning.
I'm outside about 3 o'clock in the morning, the rain has pretty much stopped and I'm getting ready to swap one set of fridge/ freezers to another set when I walk past the "dead" generator. I reach down and grab the pull start, yank it and the puppy fires right up. Now we're cooking. I've got all 6 fridges and freezers working at once. Let them run for a couple of hours and we're good for about an 8 hour sleep. It finally all came together.
Got up in the morning, a beautiful day, had my coffee and went outside to refuel the generators and start the routine all over again when BING, the power came back on. We were without power for about 20 hours. That's the worst outage we've had in well over 5, maybe 10, years but it got me to thinking about that back-up generator that I've been talking about and putting off for years.
Life is good ... if it don't kill ya!!!!